Day 1 - CasMature

This story is about two different girls and their inner demons and their struggles to overcome them.

30 Day Self-Harm Challenge – Day 1: How long have you been self-harming? Discuss why you started.’

I suppose I should introduce myself. I’m Cas; my counsellor said that writing my feelings into some sort of diary could help me express myself more, whatever the hell that means. She said that filling a little book with all my inner turmoil, and my deepest thoughts could help me organise things in my head. But what she really means is that I’m messed up and I should resort to a notebook because no one else has the time or patience to deal with my emotional bullshit, which is just such a comforting thought. So imagine I did resort to a diary- what happens when I’ve poured my heart and soul into it? Rereading pages and pages of my ‘innermost thoughts’ and shit would likely be the most triggering thing out there. So I’m not writing a diary, I’m going to do this challenge thing. It might help, it might not, but it’s worth a shot. At this stage, I’m willing to try anything to stop myself from giving up.

I should just get back to the question. I’ve been cutting since I was fifteen, that’s just under two years ago now. It’s 1 year 354 days to be exact. I don’t want to be too personal with this thing, because otherwise I would just be writing a diary, and I refuse to comply with my counsellor, because I know she wants me to confide in these pages because she thinks that for all this depression, all the anxiety, all the pure, undiluted negativity that I have stems from the fact that I have no friends. Quite frankly that insults me. I have friends- not many I’ll give her that, but I’ve got a few. Unfortunately I don’t even live in the same country as most of them.

Which brings me to my blog, a permanent source of ire between me and my parents. It’s been the only thing that’s gotten me through the last couple years. It’s kept me sane, and given me a creative outlet for everything I’ve been bottling up inside of me. I don’t need a diary because all my feelings, everything that I dredge up from the dark recesses inside of me, I express through pictures, and words, and quotes and anything that accurately depicts how I feel. And looking back through that is so much more satisfying than having a notebook hidden somewhere, away from my parents prying eyes. So to stay away from the whole diary concept, I’m writing this in a document on my netbook, which, so far, my parents have respected my privacy and haven’t attempted to look at anything I’ve got on here.

I’m digressing again. I’d promised myself that I’d keep this brief, no more than 200 words, maximum. Maybe I should rewrite it. I first began cutting about the same time that school became living hell for me. The gashes grew deeper, directly proportional to my grades. By the time I was failing most of my classes, I couldn’t bare to show my arms nor thighs in public without them being covered up as much as possible. What started as occasional scratches and bruises that I inflicted on myself evolved into a way to relieve the anxiety. The numbness that I started to feel all those months ago still lingers in me now. I’ve heard people ask others if people self-harmed for attention. I can only speak for myself, but I do it because feeling the blade running through my flesh is the only way that I can feel again, because experiencing pain is an amazingly beautiful thing compared to the dull nothing that has become my equilibrium state at the moment.

So I’m caught in the balance- I know it’s a downward spiral and I want to stop, I really do. I want to set a good example for my little sister, because I know she looks up to me in some ways. But at the same time it feels too good to stop. I’ve never been able to quit for more than a week. The blades become all I can think about, it’s like an incessant calling in my head which becomes louder and louder until it’s unbearably so and I have to act on it because if I don’t then it feels like I’ll lose the only bit of sanity I have left.

So this challenge might be the only way to break that cycle of blood and partially healed scars. If I can last thirty days without doing anything, I might just be able to shake myself out of it for good.

I hate myself for writing that. The way I phrase it sounds like beating depression can be a mental thing, a thing of willpower, so to speak. It’s not; depression, anxiety, mutism- they’re all diseases. People who suffer from them are sick. We need proper treatment, and we need the same support that sufferers of physical conditions, infections and diseases get. Is it too selfish to want that support network instead of the almost taboo culture surrounding mental illness? I’m sick and I desperately need help. I need real friends, I need a cure to make me feel happy inside again, not this useless counsellor who thinks she knows exactly whats going on in my head just because of her degree in psychology. She has no idea who I really am, no one does. The call me a freak and put labels on me. They say I’m fat, that I’m ugly, a loner, a failure, nothing.

And do you know what’s the worst thing about this whole embargo? I think all those years of trying to convince myself that I’m not any of those things, that I’m actually worth something have failed, because I’m starting to believe that what they say is true.

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